Unhinged
08 Nov 2023Ryuko Ntsikana
Part Twenty-Two
Unhinged
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Zooey walked around the pirate planetary base, examining everything in detail, which she found interesting. Jason unnaturally followed her, as if his legs worked separately from his body. Everyone they saw along their path appeared not to notice them, which to Jason was more than odd. They should have been killed several times by this point, but no one seemed to care that she was rummaging at will.
“Listen. You seem nice but are naive to think that whatever deal you made will hold. At some point, someone, or most of them, will break it.”
Zooey tilted her head at his comment, looking over her shoulder at him.
“Yes, as they were, they would have.”
Jason screwed up his face at that remark. “What do you mean, ‘as they were’?”
Zooey turned her head slowly, looking around the facility. “Tell me, Jason. Do you think you would make a good pirate chief?”
Jason shrugged, shifting the dirt beneath his feet with the toe of his boot. “Haven’t really thought that far ahead.”
A small, creepy smile appeared on Zooey’s face. “Of course, you haven’t. You are too new to this life to be like them,” that weird voice sounded again. “Therefore, you are salvageable.”
“How the hell do you do that?” Jason asked, growing frustrated. “I hear your voice, but your lips don’t move. Did you implant some chip into me while I was passed out on your ship?”
“No,” a voice said as the eerie giggle appeared and vanished on the wind, as before, giving Jason a chill.
“These types are required, as are all parasites. Without the mosquito or tick, there is no need to research and find new cures for that which plague others. To that end, this place has worth, but it could be better managed. For that, it needs one who is not fully indoctrinated into their ways.”
The damned mad woman thinks she can take over the clan!
Jason let out a deep laugh. “Look around you. You are one person in a pirate’s lair. That we are still alive is a miracle! The moment you turn on one, all the others will descend upon us, and that will be the end of it.”
The motion caught Jason’s attention as he turned to see the slave laborers and their tender, walking over to stand next to him.
Jason sighed, accepting that his fate was sealed. He could try to run but knew he wouldn’t get very far. The best he could hope for would be a quick death, but he knew it would be anything but, as he looked at each one of them, waiting to see who would be first to seize them.
Jason waited for what felt like an hour, though it had only been a minute, as the group turned and marched away toward the distant administrative complex.
Zooey turned and began walking back to her ship, as Jason’s legs began to follow her, without his will to do so.
“This is all a neat little trick, but at some point, whatever nanobot or chip you implanted in me will be rejected by my body.”
Zooey continued walking, at a leisurely pace, wearing a placid look on her face. “We are headed back to the ship, where you will clean yourself and prepare for your new role. The transition will take some time and will not be peaceful.”
“What the hell!” Jason yelled, flinching as one of the defensive pulse cannons turned and fired into the base itself, tearing into one of the habitation dorms near the command center.
“It has begun,” Zooey said, pausing to look back over her shoulder. Jason looked on in shocked disbelief as more weapons fired and the bright flashes and loud crashes of explosions could be seen and heard.
“How is this possible!” Jason cried out, wide-eyed and staring at Zooey, who watched the unfolding events with a passive expression.
“Once the cleansing is complete, you will be in charge of this facility and its survivors.”
Jason looked on in shocked horror, trying to comprehend what he was seeing.
“You said that once we made a move, the entirety would descend upon us and end it. Now they descend on one another, to end it, for your benefit.”
That eerie giggle flowed around him on the wind, as pure fear coursed through his shaking body.
Jason’s voice trembled as he looked at Zooey, who wore a curious expression. “I understand how you can control me, but how can you control them? There’s no way you could have implanted a chip into them or infected them with nanobots.”
“Why do you fear for those who prey upon themselves, on your behalf? They are not your kin, even though you have pledged yourself to them, for lack of a better sense of direction for your own future.”
Zooey swept her hand around, as smoke trails, tracers, and laser fire punctuated the distant scene beyond the landing pad.
“These that you would claim as yours gave you to me, in exchange for those who are now no more. You would see yourself back with them? They are dead. I would not see you in such a way. I have seen who you are within. You are not one of them, but you will rule them, and they will be one of you.”
Jason trembled with fear, scared by the eerie disembodied laugh, the deadpan look in her eyes, and the shaking of the ground that he could not tell if it was himself or the explosions rocking the complex.
Avery watched as Xochitl leaned back in her recliner inside her quarters, sipping on her beer and reading the report from Zarathustra, her head of security. Both she and the entity inside Inspector Gladsen had developed a training outline for the clan. It was tailored toward the worst-case scenario, where the entity itself would be part of the fight against a fully actualized counterpart inside another host.
Xochitl and others with cybernetic enhancements would be isolated to prevent infestation into their technological parts. Everyone was already equipped with the necessary eye protection to prevent it from entering through what it considered the easiest source. Still, there would be those randomly chosen to play as if they had been infected. Some would combat the others, while others would not reveal themselves but be injected with a protein marker that could be detected by a scan.
The weapons would not contain any technology that could be interfered with—it would be ballistic or handheld-bladed kinetic weapons. A corner of Xochitl’s mouth curled up at that. The old ways of the sword and bow were a necessary requirement to fight against the top tier of mankind’s technological nightmares. The warriors of the steppes would return.